


Two Card Monte Collection

by manic_intent



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Collection of older short fics from Livejournal, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 10:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19171273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: Stories in this set:+ Two Card Monte (XMFC/Wanted Crossover)+ Divine Inspiration (Charles is a writer with writer's block, Erik is a beta reader)+ Misunderstandings (Erik slays a dragon but finds Charles instead)+ Another Meaning for Eternity (Geometry of Chance 'verse continuation)+ After You're Gone (Erik's POV in the Let Them Talk 'verse)+ Field Trips and Other Stories (Logan goes to the pub instead of Moira)





	1. Two Card Monte

**Author's Note:**

> I never really wanted to move these stories onto AO3 since a lot of them are really short drabbles or extremely random, but after watching Dark Phoenix I thought I might as well. :) No spoilers for that film on here -- these fics were all written years back. I'd just say that I didn't think the film was good (YMMV) but if you're a Cherik fan, it's worth watching for the closure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Charles/Erik Wanted Crossover.

 

 

I.

"There are three things that you should know about me, my friend." Charles' laugh, Erik noted, was as open as the rest of him, as unselfconscious and honest as the rest of his sudden new acquaintance.   
  
The dawn was breaking over the horizon, painting streaks of pale yellow and pink over the arc of grey clouds above them, and Erik couldn't sleep. He couldn't even think about how Shaw and his revenge had just slipped through his fingers. Instead, he'd spent the rest of the night after drying out up on the deck, talking to Charles about their mutations, about their  _abilities_ , about evolution and social responsibility and others like them.   
  
Meeting someone else like him was like a thunderbolt, a revelation so intense that it seemed to Erik that this was what getting religion felt like. It was all conviction and fervour, as though he'd known Charles all his life. As though he'd  _know_ Charles all his life. It seemed irrational, this sudden connection with the slim, slightly-built man with the brilliant blue eyes. Erik had felt no connection to the others. Not even after Charles' sister had treated him to a demonstration of her own remarkable ability below decks. Erik also had no doubt that Xavier's brother had some sort of mutation of his own.  
  
"Do you normally open your conversations with disclaimers?" Erik asked dryly. The part of him that remained rational tried to draw back and trace a circle in the sand around his priorities. Edge out the wave that had just broken around it.  
  
"With people whom I'll like to know better, usually, yes."   
  
"Might be off-putting," Erik said, trying to seem sardonic and only managing wry humour in the face of his own curiosity. Charles smiled warmly at him, back pressed against the edge of the clipper. His fingers were loose at his side, thick brown hair twisting and curling in the stiff, crisp night breeze. "Well, let's have it, then."  
  
"All right. Firstly, I'm not actually British, I'm merely British-educated." Charles' smile curved with mischief at Erik's snort. "You have  _no_  idea how many girls get disappointed when they find out. I've even been called a liar."  
  
"Duly noted."  
  
"Secondly, Raven isn't actually my sister, but she  _is_  my sister." Charles held out his palm, face down, and wiggled it up and down. "That one's a bit trickier."  
  
"Meaning that she's adopted."   
  
"You're  _good_ ," Charles said, delightedly. Erik smirked at him, caught up by his infectious and boyish humour. He hadn't felt this comfortable around anyone for decades. It seemed too easy just to play along, to relax, just for a moment in time. "All right, lastly—"  
  
"You're actually eighteen years of age?"   
  
Charles laughed out aloud. "I suppose I could be flattered. But no. Lastly, Wesley isn't real."  
  
That brought Erik up short. He'd been introduced to Wesley below decks, Charles' identical twin brother with the American accent and the wildly different dress sense. Where Charles dressed ten years above his age, Wesley dressed ten years below it. Where Charles came off as prim and proper, all decorum and poise, Wesley was brash and smugly confident. Wesley's grip when they had shaken hands had been strong and honest, and although he'd seemed more interested in firing jibes at his brother than helping him dry off, Erik had instinctively liked him. Behind it all, Raven had rolled her eyes like a veteran spectator.   
  
Perhaps Charles had meant...? "As in, under the wiseass routine, he's actually insecure and shy?"  
  
"Hah! No." Charles glanced away for a moment, at the waves scything past the curved hull of their ship. "I meant what I said. He's not real."  
  
"He shook my hand."  
  
"No," Charles said slowly. The playful humour in his eyes faded into something enigmatic. "I made you think that he shook your hand. Or at least, my subconscious did. He's a projection. The real Wesley passed away years ago."

"I don't quite understand," Erik admitted cautiously.  
  
"Look," Charles said. He wiggled his fingers beside his temple when Erik stared at Charles blankly. "I'm a telepath. I can make people see things that aren't there."  
  
"You're saying that Wesley is some sort of elaborate illusion of your twin brother?" Erik frowned at Charles. "Why? For self-defence?" Wesley was openly armed, with a pistol strapped to one thigh and a knife to the other.  
  
"It's akin to... sometimes amputees still feel as though their arms are there. Ghost limbs," Charles elaborated, as Erik merely watched him blankly. "Wesley was my identical twin. We had a bond that was... stronger than usual, because of my mutation. I guess I've never gotten used to him not being there anymore. It's sort of manifested. Like a visible imaginary friend."  
  
"You were talking to him last night." The twins had exchanged verbal jabs all the way until Charles had disappeared into his cabin for a change of clothes.   
  
"Ah, yes, well." Charles looked embarrassed for a moment, his cheeks pinking. "Force of habit. I mean, I do rationally know that he's a projection of my subconscious. I just can't help it, when he's just  _there_. I'm sorry. I do realize that it's all very off-putting and unusual."  
  
"Actually," Erik said, choosing his words carefully and watching Charles as he did so, "I find it rather fascinating. He's very convincing. Raven knows, I presume."  
  
"Oh yes. And Moira does as well—that's the CIA agent, the lovely young lady with the seemingly sour disposition—but none other, at present." Charles seemed utterly and refreshingly unselfconscious about his admission of mental instability. "I wouldn't put it that way," Charles said, looking faintly indignant. His smile faltered a little at Erik's blink. "Ah. Perhaps there's one last matter. I can't help but pick up loud surface thoughts. Like that one. I'll try not to, but it's a little difficult if I don't concentrate."   
  
"He also hasn't told you about the way he gets after drinking a couple of pints." Wesley's American drawl made Erik looked sharply to his left. Wesley... Charles'projection was dressed in faded jeans this time, with an untucked black shirt with its cuffs folded loosely up to his elbows, the pistol and the knife still strapped to his thighs. "Not to mention his horrific pick-up lines. There are some bars in London and Oxford that I've never been to which will never let me in ever again. Some pretty dolls I've never spoken to who'd sooner slap me in the face than give me the time of day."  
  
"I don't see why Erik has to know that about me," Charles said primly, fingers pressed to his temple. Like a jarred cinematographic image, Wesley seemed to waver. He turned blurred at the edges and abruptly disappeared. When Charles dropped his fingers, Wesley jumped back into focus, making Erik flinch backwards. "Ah. Pardon me. This happens sometimes," Charles said.  
  
"Whenever he's nervous," Wesley said.  
  
"What are you nervous about?" Erik asked, looking Wesley carefully over. From the bob of his Adam's apple as he spoke to his breathing, the occasional blink, to the shadow he threw on the deck from the light of the ship's lamps, Wesley looked perfectly real. It was remarkable. If he was truly a projection, Charles was a very powerful mutant indeed.  
  
"Oh, well." Charles coughed, just as Wesley said blithely, "Everyone he's 'fessed up to has run screaming in the other direction or accused him of all sorts of interesting things. 'Witchcraft' is a standing favourite of mine."  
  
"There's not much space to run screaming to. We're on a ship," Erik pointed out, deadpan. Charles laughed, startled, flushed with pleasure.  
  
"You're not afraid."  
  
"He's probably harbouring some psychosis of his own." Wesley heaved himself up to perch precariously on the edge of the ship, feet dangling over the deck. "I'm thinking, offhand, paranoia, maybe a little sociopathy, perhaps a touch of compulsiveness."  
  
"Your subconscious is very offensive," Erik said, though he allowed his mouth to curl up faintly at the edges. "I'm not sure what that says about you."

"Perish the thought," Charles declared, even as Wesley said blandly, "He's awfully repressed, obviously."  
  
"That's it, away with you." Charles was grinning openly again, and as Wesley abruptly disappeared without even a flicker, Charles winked at him, like a schoolboy sharing a secret, relaxing almost imperceptibly against the rail, his grin turning crooked under faintly unfocused eyes. "So, ah, have you been to America before, Erik... my goodness, how rude of me, I've forgotten to ask—you don't mind me calling you Erik, do you?" 

 

1.0.

  
Raven wasn't entirely sure what to make of the newcomer. Erik Lehnsherr was handsome the way that a large hunting cat was handsome, sleek and self-confident and elegant, up until its intended victim edged in too close and got its face torn off for its trouble. And as to the way he had single-handedly destroyed Shaw's yacht with its own anchor-chain... Raven had always logically known that there were more people like Charles, Wes and herself out there, and if there were more, then it stood to reason that there would be people who had incredibly powerful mutations.  
  
Actually  _meeting_  one of them was still a shock.   
  
And Charles—blindly trusting Charles—had blithely latched on to Erik Lehnsherr as though he was the manifestation of Mendel and Darwin all at once. From the way he nattered on and on over the stranger, it was as though he'd never  _grown up_  with two mutants. Glumly, Raven stared out of the porthole of the tiny cabin that she had been assigned to, folding her arms tightly across herself, nibbling on her lower lip, legs crossed. Charles wasn't immune to infatuation, but this seemed to be on another level altogether. She wasn't sure what to do.  
  
"Wes."  
  
"Hello, ducky." Wes popped into focus and plopped down on the bed beside her in a loose-limbed slouch. "Where's my smile, princess?"  
  
Raven scowled at her oldest brother, bathrobe hugged over her blue-scaled skin. "I'm not really in the mood. I need to talk to you about Charles. I think he's getting in way over his head. As usual."  
  
"Don't worry, kitten," Wes said, reaching over to ruffle her hair, "I'm all over it. Remember what I told you before I left on that Boston job?"  
  
"That you'd come back, and even if anything happened to you, you'd always be watching our backs," Raven murmured. She exhaled and leaned back against the hull of the ship.   
  
Wesley had come back, all right. Riddled full of bullets, his breathing in hoarse, choking rattles. He'd bled out in her arms, in the foyer of their childhood home, contorted in agony and drowning on the blood in his lungs. Too far gone even to say goodbye. Charles had shattered immediately, curled up tight against his brother with dry, racking, glassy-eyed sobs, shaking violently and ignoring her pleas and cajoling and her increasingly firmer attempts to pull him away. She'd had to switch forms to default to get the strength to pry him off his twin's body, Christ. In the end, Raven had buried Wes alone in the gardens, under the twins' favourite ash tree, tears blurring her vision through every heft of the shovel.  
  
Charles had spent a week holed up in his room, barely eating or drinking. He'd stared out at the ash tree in the garden, pressed against the window. One day Raven had screamed and cried and thrown the biggest tantrum of her life, just to see if anything would reach him, frightened and frustrated and afraid. Charles had blinked at her as though he'd just noticed her, and then he had reached out for her hand and squeezed it tight—  
  
And Wes had come back, right the next day.  
  
"What's Charles doing now?"   
  
"Boring our new guest, I don't wonder." Wes rolled his shoulders into an easy shrug. "He's doing the 'there are three things that you should know about me' song and dance." For a moment, Wes' tone switched into Charles' prim and proper British accent. Raven giggled. "That's it, princess! Big smile."  
  
"It's funny how Charles is convinced that you're not real. Even after all this time."  
  
"That's because I'm not, remember?" Wes flickered and reappeared beside the porthole, peeking out over the dark waves.   
  
"Not technically. I meant that he still thinks that he's making you up."

"Maybe he is. He's a telepath, after all." Wes pressed his fingers to his temple, scrunching up his face in a dead-on rendition of Charles' Expression of Deep Concentration. A burp of laughter escaped before Raven could swallow it down.  
  
"Yeah, and I'm your sister. I think if Charles imagined you, made you up, you wouldn't be exactly  _you._ " Raven waved a hand to encompass Wes' slouched form. "Nobody really has a perfect memory of another person, we're all touched by bias. But you're  _you_. I can tell. I'm your sister."  
  
Wes wiggled his fingers beside his temple, grinning mischievously. "Or you think that you can tell. Or you want to think that you can tell. Or you think that you want to think that you-"  
  
"Stop that, I hate it when you do that." Raven threw a pillow, which bounced off the bolted-down wardrobe when Wes flickered out of sight and focused back into her vision again a foot to the right. "Asshole. Did Lehnsherr kick up a fuss?"  
  
"No. Finds it fascinating, apparently." Wes pulled a face.  
  
"Huh." Raven blinked, surprised. "He's either desperate to get into Charles' pants, or he must be some shade of crazy himself." Just like every other person that Charles had ever let into his pants, come to think of it. Things often moved all too quickly from what Raven mentally termed the Hugs-And-Kisses stage to the Pitchforks-And-Stakes episodes, particularly whenever the third party had to start coming to terms with a not-substantial older brother and a protective younger sister with a talent for vicious pranks.  
  
"Exactly!" Wes spread his gloved palms wide. "Attagirl. I knew that you'd see it my way. Have you seen that cat smile? He smiles like a shark. I don't think people are meant to have that many teeth. Must be a secondary mutation. Maybe he can chew through and digest metal, on top of bending it around, spit it out like a machine gun."  
  
Raven shuddered at the mental image. "Did you see how he tore through that yacht? I think that he's bad news."  
  
"I'll have to admit, I'm impressed. Or disappointed. I thought that you were going to say that he was smoking  _hot_ , or something along those lines." Wes smirked at Raven as she scowled at him. "Honestly. You, and Charles, both need to get laid. We meet one of the hottest guys that I've ever seen and you sit here moping, while Charles is talking his ear off about hybrid pea theories. Jesus Christ on a unicycle, am I the only one who thinks that there's a problem here?"  
  
"I don't know why I wished so hard that you'd come back, I hate you." Raven rolled her eyes. "He's not that hot, come on. And I thought that you just agreed that there's got to be something wrong with that cat."  
  
"I admit that, but I posit to the grand jury that Lehnsherr's probable psychosis and him being fucking hot are two unrelated issues."  
  
Raven rolled her eyes. "This is serious, Wes. You've got to watch Charles carefully. Scare Lehnsherr off, maybe. Or just make him back off." If she couldn't get Wes to help her, Raven would have to resort to drastic measures. Kiss up to Lehnsherr, maybe. Charles usually backed the hell off someone once he picked those sort of details out of their heads, and Raven had used it to advantage in the past.  
  
"And how would I do that?"  
  
"You're the ghost. Do that 'woo woo' thing." Raven raised her hands, palms down, and wiggled her fingers. "Rattle his wardrobe or something. Phase through him a few times, that usually gets results. Roll up your eyes and jump out of corners."  
  
Wes arched both his eyebrows. "What an excellent suggestion, princess. And by 'excellent' I mean 'utterly humiliating', of course."  
  
"You're dead, Wes. Dignity shouldn't matter."

 

II.

  
Erik rather regretted allowing himself to get attached to the CIA in the morning when they were all packed into a convoy to be driven off in a direction that was the very opposite of the one that Shaw had last been seen going towards. His curiosity had been pared down, he was exhausted, hungry, and in the light of day, Charles' uncontrollable projection of his dead brother seemed far more unsettling than quirky.  
  
Wesley stepped  _through_  him on his way into their assigned car. Although Erik had felt nothing, he'd shuddered, hesitated, and let himself into the front passenger seat instead beside the CIA agent known as Moira. She didn't bat an eye as the last Xavier sibling scrambled into the car, starting up the engine and pulling out of the dockside car park.  
  
"We're headed to a private airstrip, then we'll be catching a helicopter to Langley," she said in a clipped tone. Other uniformly black cars pulled away behind them and into traffic. "The Division X facility. You'll all be quartered there, for the time being. Division X put its ass on the fire in front of the Director for the 'privilege', so play nice and don't set anything on fire."  
  
_A prison?_  Erik thought grimly, only for Wesley to chirp, "A codenamed CIA facility? It's going to be all stainless steel, security silver and Kalashnikov chic."  
  
"You're exaggerating," Raven declared, with the lofty self-awareness of a young sister.

Charles murmured, "I'm sure that it isn't as awful as you think, Wes."  
  
"Why do you do that?" Erik asked. A flick of his eyes up into the rear-view mirror revealed, even more disconcertingly, Wesley's  _reflection._ Even though he wasn't actually there. "Why do you bother talking to yourself? It can't all be habit."  
  
In the stark light of day, the logical part of Erik's mind that hadn't been overwhelmed by revelation had noted three observations: (a) that in order for anyone to perceive Wesley so perfectly, down to a perception of a firm handshake, Charles had to be invading that person's mind; (b) that an uncontrollable telepathic mutation was a frightening concept to contemplate; and (c) the entire situation was precisely the sort of trouble that he didn't need. 

"Wesley is  _Wesley._ " Raven's eyes were narrowed and hard in the rear-view mirror. Wesley merely chuckled. 

Charles' smile was lopsided and tentatively amused. "It's a habit, my friend. We used to—"

"—finish each other's sentences," Wesley continued, without a breath in between. He smiled a cocky smirk all at odds with Charles' ingratiating half-smile. "Are you truly focused on revenge all the time, Lehnsherr? That must make you an awfully boring person."

The car shuddered around them as though caught in a quake, the car alarm squealing in a sudden harsh whine as Moira cursed and pulled over abruptly at the side of the road. "For fuck's sake, Lehnsherr!" Moira snarled.

Erik took a deep breath. The alarm shut off, thin-lipped and flushed from the spike of temper that he had felt. "You don't know a thing about me, Xavier." Or did he? Had he dared look? Had he  _dared_  sieve through all of Erik's memories? And then, so doing, had Charles then so cavalierly dismissed them? Erik had to take another deep breath as the car rattled again, furious at the very thought, at the invasion—

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Charles said, in a rush. Erik stiffened as he felt an edge of sharp panic that most certainly hadn't belonged to him. A cold sweat broke down his back and Moira swore again, wide-eyed, mouthing something unintelligible in her Scottish brogue. 

Raven surged across the image of Wesley to pinch Charles on the arm, twisting hard. Charles yelped in pain. Erik flinched at the ghost-sensation of a pinch along his own arm and Moira jumped in her seat, the seatbelt jerking fast. The sense of panic subsided. Charles sat pressed against the seat, pale and shaking. Erik risked a glance back over his shoulder. Raven was settling over at her end of the car, her glare murderous as she spared him a cold look. Wesley froze in frame for a heartbeat before abruptly blinking and grinning, nothing of mischief in the curve of his smile as he flipped Erik off and crossed his denim-clad legs. 

"Drop me off here," Erik said briskly with a quick glance over at the sidewalk, now profoundly unsettled. It wouldn't take him long to work his way back to the docks. There would be records there from the harbormaster. Perhaps some sort of paper trail that he could follow.

"Oh no," Moira disagreed. "You destroyed a yacht by yourself. We're going to have to take you in, for an interview if nothing less."

"You can't hold me here if I don't want to be here," Erik shot back, keeping his voice low and dangerous.

"We have a file on Sebastian Shaw," Moira retorted. Although Erik recognised a flicker of fear in the agent's eyes, she held firm. "I thought perhaps that we could pool resources. Once you've finished being afraid of one of your own kind."

"I  _like_  you, MacTaggert." Wesley whistled, wickedly delighted. Raven sniggered. Erik had to take in another deep breath, gritting his teeth. Even if he used the metal around him to throttle the agent, it would be (a) definitely far more trouble than he could afford, assaulting a government agent and (b) if he lost his temper, Erik was only going to be proving her point. 

"Fine. Until I view the file." Erik folded his arms, glaring out of the window.

"You need to learn a bit of control, Xavier. Just a friendly observation," Moira said as she pulled back into traffic.

"I know. Please accept my apologies," Charles said, ashen-faced and lifeless and still. Beside him, Wesley grinned, eyes sparkling with vivacious humour that was all the more disquieting now that Erik knew that it wasn't real.

"If you think he's out of control  _now_ , you should try him after half a bottle of good whisky," Wesley said.

Moira sniffed, focused on the road. Soon the silence settled into an awkward blanket. Raven glared out of the window beside her and Wesley curled against Charles, a perfect facsimile of a pair of affectionate twins down to their mingled breaths, wreathed fingers and inaudible, murmured whispers. Erik suppressed a shudder, fingers curled tightly into his palms. He kept his eyes on the cars gliding past. In the survivor's camp in Haifa, he'd met men and women who had lost their loved ones. It wasn't uncommon for them to suffer hallucinations or to abruptly pick up apparent glimpses of those they had loved and lost in a crowd. Trauma and sorrow often played cruel games.

Grief manifested itself in different ways—so why not the inexplicable, when it came to 'powered' people like himself? Gritting his teeth, Erik supposed that he should apologize, but the words stuttered to nothing within him in an ugly, resentful curl. He had spent far too much time with his life out of his hands to willingly endure any form of puppetry, however inadvertent. However remarkable.

Erik's gaze dropped briefly back down to the rear-view mirror, only to meet Charles' bright-blue eyes with a start. There was something like a frisson of shock, a pulse of static. Erik jerked his gaze away to watch the sleeting traffic outside. There was a faint touch on his mind, a gentle pressure on the back of his head. Charles was working his way up to say something, an apology perhaps. As Erik resolutely ignored it, it withdrew.  

2.0.

Charles brightened up visibly once they were introduced to the Closet Geek Mutant that the CIA seemed to employ as possibly under-aged, suspiciously skilled scientific labour. If Raven hadn't had to keep a close eye on Lehnsherr, she probably would have admitted that Hank McCoy was sort of cute. He was gawkish, sweet, and frighteningly intelligent. If Raven could be said to have a type, McCoy would have fit the bill.

Granted, so would Charles, but that was creeper territory. Raven had once acknowledged—aesthetically and clinically—that her twin adopted brothers were good looking in a boyish sort of way. It was difficult to look at them both and unsee all the childhood identical-twins pranks that they had pulled on everyone, including herself.  
  
Moira left Charles chattering away at Hank and began to stalk briskly away from the laboratory, back into the corridor. "I'll show you Shaw's file," she told Lehnsherr. After some hesitation, Raven followed them. Charles should be fine where he was. Raven prided herself on being a fair reader of people and Hank seemed harmless. Learning more about Shaw, on the other hand, could be critical to this crazy venture that Charles seemed to have blithely fallen into.   
  
Unfortunately, Raven should have known that anything involving copious paperwork was going to be doomed to abject failure. Moira dumped stacks of faxed documents on a table in what looked like a reinforced interview room, included coffee and plates of cold sandwiches as an afterthought, and swept away to do a debrief. Raven managed one folder of dull financial information before deciding to concentrate on a cold ham sandwich.  
  
Lehnsherr ignored her utterly. He was already on his second folder, running his eye over it with the grim determination of a deranged accountant. He was even ignoring the sandwiches. Bored, Raven morphed into Moira's image, then into Hank's. She'd merged into a passable image of Charles by the time Lehnsherr glanced up, his expression pinched with annoyance.  
  
"Must you keep doing that?"  
  
"I'm sorry, am I disturbing you?" Raven asked sweetly in Charles' voice. She was not above petty vengeance. Lehnsherr scowled at her but dropped his gaze back down to the folder after a moment's pause. "Who is this Shaw cat, anyway? You and the CIA seem really hot to get him."  
  
"What do you know about him?" Lehnsherr shot back without looking up.  
  
"That he's some sort of terrorist." Raven's impression of Shaw was vague. She'd merely tagged along because that was what she had always done whenever Charles got himself into any sort of potential trouble. "And that he's possibly special, like us, or at the least, he has mutant friends. That's really why Charles agreed to help. Other than Wes and me, and I guess you as well, he's never met others like us."  
  
Lehnsherr nodded curtly. Nothing else seemed forthcoming. Raven sighed out aloud, leaning her chin on Charles' baby-smooth palms. "Can I ask you something?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Last night," Raven continued unrepentantly, "Wes said that you were getting along famously with Charles. I mean, even after he did the 'Three Things' act. Before you got into the car this morning you already had some sort of stick up your ass. Did something happen, or is it just a case of major delayed 'Oh God burn him at the stake' sort of reaction?"  
  
Lehnsherr muttered something guttural under his breath. "It's not your business, little girl."  
  
"Asshole." Raven flickered back into her blonde form, irritated. "And to think that Charles thought that you were different."  
  
"Does he?" Lehnsherr asked flatly, "I do recall him saying that I was 'awfully boring'."   
  
"That?" Raven blinked, surprised. "That was  _Wes_. He runs his mouth all the time. He's always been like that. He doesn't usually mean it."  
  
Lehnsherr glanced up with an odd expression. "Wesley is Charles. Or at least, he's Charles' subconscious."  
  
"Wesley isn't Charles," Raven scoffed. She did know that this tended to be a sticking point with people. It had been for her once, up until she'd become convinced that Wesley was just  _Wesley_ , a ghost. Whether he was linked up to Charles' telepathy or not seemed unimportant. Supernatural hauntings were nothing new anyway. Ghost stories were everywhere in the world, in every culture. The fact of Wesley's post-life existence was rather less remarkable than a person who could warp metal, or change shape, or read minds.   
  
"Then what is he?"  
  
"He's a ghost."  
  
"Ghost's aren't this visible. Or tactile."  
  
"Have you met one before?"

Lehnsherr drew pause. The edge of his lip curled up for a moment before he looked back down at the folder. "No. Perhaps he is a ghost. Your brother, however, seems to believe otherwise."  
  
"Charles believes in a lot of crazy things." Raven shrugged. "Like world peace. Wes is a ghost, Charles is a scientist. Thinking that he's the one responsible for Wes being around would be the logical conclusion, wouldn't it?"  
  
"You don't believe in world peace?" Lehnsherr's tone was facetious. Raven let out a slow breath, tension untangling itself in her stomach.  
  
"I don't think it's possible. The world is at least fifty per cent asshole."  
  
"I've shaken Wesley's hand."   
  
"Yeah? I've had a pillow fight with him. Look. Wes is... was... one of us. He had powers too. I'm sure he died with a hell of a lot of unfinished business. Maybe our ghosts manifest better."  
  
"You're entirely certain that it has nothing to do with Charles."  
  
"I'm certain," Raven said.  
  
Lehnsherr snorted, tracing a line on a page in the folder as if he didn't particularly believe her. "He can make Wesley disappear."  
  
"Or he can make you—and himself—think that Wesley's disappeared. He's good at denial," Raven said. She pulled a face.  
  
"And by that same card, Miss Xavier," Lehnsherr said, turning a page, "it's clear that you can't trust reality where your brother is concerned, can you? After all, he can read your mind freely. He can also alter it freely. He can't control himself, I suspect."  
  
"He won't do that. That's not Charles. He'd never read your mind without permission."  
  
"He picked my name out of mine."  
  
"You were drowning!"  
  
"Miss Xavier, even were I to believe you about your brother's integrity, and I assure you that I do not," Lehnsherr said coldly as Raven opened her mouth, outraged, "I have no intention of apologizing. Nor, I suspect, will it matter. I intend to leave this place once I have a better lead on Shaw."  
  
"I hope that keeps you warm at night," Raven growled, aware that she was being childishly petty. She was far too angry to care. Raven rose to her feet, only for Wes to abruptly appear at the end of the table, elbows tucked on the back of a chair with his chin on his palms. "What are  _you_  doing here?" Raven demanded.  
  
Wes grinned at her, tilting his left shoulder up a fraction. "I'm waiting to see you try and punch his lights out, ducky."  
  
"I wasn't  _going_  to," Raven said. Lehnsherr glanced between them both, his jaw set. "Maybe. Okay. I was tempted."  
  
"Right, well, remember how you were taught," Wes said, with a cheerful nod at Lehnsherr. "You've got to lock your wrist and put your weight behind it. If he ducks, you knee him in the balls."  
  
Raven rolled her eyes, sinking back into the chair and folding her arms sulkily across her chest. Lehnsherr pinched at the bridge of his nose briefly. "Can both of you please leave me alone?" he asked.  
  
Wes ignored him. "Well, come on then, princess, you're going to have to work it out of your system. Keep your knees bent."  
  
"It's not satisfying when you've already told him what I wanted to do to," Raven said.  
  
"Really? I usually find that it's more satisfying when you tell someone you're going to break his nose and  _then_  you break his nose," Wesley said.  
  
Lehnsherr snarled something harsh in German. He snapped, "If I apologize to your brother, will the both of you leave me be?"  
  
"Oh, well, if you're going to," Raven said. 

"Only if you also take off your shirt," Wesley said, then added a "What?" when Raven scowled at him. "I've got to get something out of this, don't I? I'm joking, Raven. And Lehnsherr? Don't bother. It's rather pointless apologizing to a telepath. If you're really sorry, he'd already know it. Come on, princess. I'm going to show you a really neat room that I found here the last time."  
  
"You've been to this facility before?" Raven asked, curiosity piqued enough to get up from the table, her temper forgotten. She ignored Lehnsherr's hastily veiled surprise and his expression of careful speculation.  
  
"I've been everywhere, ducky." Wes walked through the door. Even as Raven opened it, she heard the security guards on the other side let out a collective oath.

"Someday you're going to have to tell me what you used to do whenever you left the mansion," Raven told him as she closed the door. Wes smiled at her the way she hated it, mirthless and still and enigmatic. "Office jobs don't tend to end up with you getting shot to death, Wes."  
  
"Raven, what I did..." Wes paused. He sighed and kept on walking. "It was all smoke and mirrors."  
  
"A simple 'you wouldn't believe me' would have worked, you know," Raven said, disentangling the cryptic phrase with some irritation. Wes did always love his word games, unlike his twin brother. Charles would always just move straight to the truth, sometimes bluntly, sometimes with tact, but it was always invariable. It was how she knew that Wes was  _Wes_. If Wes had truly been up to no good and the office story was a cover, he wouldn't straight out just say so.  
  
Breathing out, the small worm of self-doubt that had curled in after the flare of her temper in the almost-violent confrontation with Lehnsherr pulled away. Raven stepped forward to Wes' side, matching his brisk pace. "By the way, is this room in a restricted area?"  
  
"Maybe. Why?"  
  
Raven grinned. "Just so I'd know whether I'm going to get into trouble afterwards."  
  
"Says the shapeshifter." 

III.

  
Erik willed the door to the motel room to close itself, tugging on the metal of its lock. He floated the suitcase over to the three-legged table by the discoloured curtains and sank down into the room's sole, lumpy armchair with a low curse, rubbing at his eyes. Forcing himself to walk away had been surprisingly difficult. Charles had come after Erik to try and talk him down. It hadn't mattered. Erik had watched as impassively as he could as Charles stumbled over his words and ended up apologising again, awkwardly. Erik had known that he had to go. Or try to.  
  
_I could make you stay._  
  
Erik shuddered again, at the careful, thoughtful way that Charles had just thrown that statement—that  _threat—_ out there. He hadn't acted on it, but Erik had known that he could have. Erik would have to find a way to guard himself against people like Charles, like the woman that Shaw kept at his side.  
  
When his heartbeat finally slowed, Erik breathed out and opened his eyes. He slipped the coin out of his pocket to float it between his fingers, allowing the simple function of manipulating the piece of familiar metal to calm him. Judging from what the CIA had on Shaw, his next target was going to be in the Kremlin. He was going to have to book a flight there, arrange for a visa, check on some of his contacts. Russia was going to be difficult, and not only because of the language barrier. Perhaps it would be simpler to attempt to track the submarine. It had to dock somewhere. Shaw enjoyed his creature comforts. He wouldn't stay in a submarine any longer than necessary.   
  
Pulling himself to his feet and slipping the coin back into his pocket, Erik headed for the bathroom for a quick, hot shower. He tried not to think of the strange mutants he had left behind, concentrating on attempting to grasp Shaw's greater picture. If he couldn't, it was going to be more and more difficult to trace Shaw. Absorbed, trying to link the threads that the CIA had gathered together, Erik padded out of the bathroom in a bathrobe and had nearly made it back to the armchair before he realized that he was no longer alone in the room.  
  
Wesley was sitting cross-legged on the armchair, the suitcase open on the floor, going through the papers. He glanced up sharply when Erik inhaled in a harsh gasp and grinned, utterly unabashed as he shuffled the papers back together into the suitcase, closing it and setting it back at the side table. "Sorry. I didn't get a look at that earlier. You left in quite a hurry."  
  
"You could just pick it out of my mind," Erik told Wesley-Charles warily, "rather than make up such an elaborate illusion." Or had he? Perhaps the illusion itself was merely sleight of hand. Erik wouldn't have thought to concentrate on searching out any foreign pressures on his mind, in his shock.  
  
"I don't have telepathy. Never have." Wesley said, spreading his arms out, palms up. "Heading to Russia next, are we?" 

"I could be. We've parted ways, Xavier," Erik said warily. He was too aware of all the metal in the room, of the clasps in the suitcase to the buckles on the belt of his pants, the fittings to the lamps and the hinges in the door. It was an awareness born out of sheer defensive habit, even though he knew that metal would be of no aid to him in any sort of fight with someone who wasn't really there. "You said that you wouldn't make me stay."

"Call this our little secret." Wesley's playful smile slipped, flickering and disjunct, like an inconsistent image frame slotted into a reel. "Besides, Charles doesn't know that I'm here."

"Not consciously."

"You could say that." 

"You need help, Xavier." Erik refused to play along. The people cosseting Charles about his clear problems had most likely simply exacerbated them, allowed him to keep building up the false persona of his brother rather than forcing him to keep moving on and dealing with his grief. "Ask Moira to refer you to a psychologist." He personally wouldn't trust a shrink, let alone one that the CIA would recommend, but sometimes desperation bred necessity. "Before you hurt yourself, or someone important to you."

"Says the person hell-bent on murder." Wesley bounced on the balls of his feet, all fluid grace as he grinned mischievously at Erik. "I've known what that was like. It's a rush like no other, hunting someone, isn't it? Looking at them down the barrel of a nice, well-oiled rifle? The thing is, after you kill one person, the next one gets easier. And easier. And after a while, you can't stop. You've killed before already, haven't you? I can tell, you've got that look around you."

"You've known what it's like?" Erik frowned, surprised. Charles had struck him as a person in desperate need of psychiatric attention, but he certainly had not had the impression that Charles was a killer. Particularly not the sort that his projection was intimating.

Wesley nodded, his mouth set in a hard twist. "Oh, not Charles. I meant myself. It was the usual stuff, sadly. Had a godawful office job, fell in with a gorgeous girl out of fate or sheer accident, fell further in with the wrong crowd, became an assassin, eventually, my second job caught up with me, became lethally retired, bled out at home, the end."

"An  _assassin_?"

"There's a fraternity, an American one." Wesley waved a hand at the window dismissively, his twanging American drawl catching on the word  _fraternity_  in careful focus. "Also a few in other countries. Comes from the lack of superheroes, or so I've been told. There's been a glaring void since Captain America disappeared."

Erik could only stare, a slower, uglier suspicion waking gradually within him. Carefully, he said, "Raven thinks that you're a ghost."

"She would," Wesley agreed, his expression softening for a moment, amused. "She's a strong girl, that one, but she's plenty stubborn."

"But you're not a ghost?"

"Maybe," Wesley said, after a thoughtful pause. "This isn't exactly something I've done before, you recognise. But I remember before I died. Charles was pulling me in," Wesley said, his eyes distant. "Like he was looking through my mind, all of it, from everything I could ever remember, and recording it, all of it. I'd been in his mind before, and he in mine, but it was different. More intense, like we were merging. Like we were never going to be apart again." Wesley shuddered for a moment, his eyes blank. "I wanted that. God. I just wanted to live."

This had probably been the breaking point, Erik realized. Taking another consciousness into himself out of some desperate attempt to preserve his memory of his dying brother. It had to have overtaxed Charles' ability. Overtaxed his mind to the point that in order to compensate, Charles had thrown it outward. Sundered it from his own consciousness out of necessity, given it a name and given it form. "So you  _are_  a projection."

"I guess the definition of 'ghost' fits. I'm insubstantial, and I'm dead," Wesley said as he wiggled his fingers before him. "And possibly creepy and annoying. I get that a lot." 

"And you used to be an assassin, part of some global villainous fraternity of assassins," Erik said sardonically.

"Not exactly, and I know it's hard to believe—"

"Xavier," Erik interrupted flatly, fingers clenched so tightly that his knuckles ached, "how much of 'Wesley' was ever real?  _Mein Gott_ , listen to yourself!" 

Wesley had been dead for years. The pressure of sorting out a dual consciousness had clearly taken its toll. Belonging to a group of secret assassins, abrupt meetings with beautiful women—these were likely plot staples from boyhood fantasies, bled over and merged with his brother's 'real' memories. The brilliant mind that Erik had felt in the water was fraying and cracking at the edges, and Charles didn't even know it.

"Of course I'm real. What a silly question," Wesley said with a crooked little grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. He vanished.

Erik shuddered and let out a harsh exhalation of breath, forcing his hands to unclench themselves, studying the red crescents that his nails had left into his palms. He was sweating under his bathrobe—

"See you in Russia, Lehnsherr," Wesley whispered behind him. Erik spun around. He was alone. On the side table, the suitcase was in the exact position and angle as he'd last left it, untouched. 

3.0.

The novelty of living in her very own real-life spy thriller lost its lustre after a few days. Raven found herself heartily bored. Charles had grown absorbed with something that he was building with Hank in the laboratory, and although Raven was allowed the occasional trip out to town if accompanied by Wesley and a pointedly unobtrusive suit who tailed their footsteps, routine and free time were beginning to pull on her nerves.

Granted, when she had been in Oxford waiting for Charles to finish his thesis, waitressing hadn't exactly been the most exciting ways of passing time. After the midnight, yacht-destroying, surprise-submarine jaunt offshore though, a daily routine felt trite. 

At least Lehnsherr had left as Raven hoped that he would. Charles had been disappointed for days despite her efforts. In the end, scientific curiosity had won out and Charles had gotten over it. That and whatever work that the CIA occasionally spirited him away for.

"It's just intelligence work," Wes said dismissively as they sat at a roadside cafe a couple of hours' drive away from the facility, enjoying the afternoon sunshine. Charles had been dragged away from his laboratory and was within the cafe, placing their order. Their tail sat a few tables away. A pair of agents, ostensibly reading the morning's papers. 

"You mean they use him to interrogate people?"

"Not exactly," Wes said thoughtfully, the way he did whenever he was trying a way to circle around a difficult topic. Raven scowled at him.

"Wes."

"So maybe they have a few suspects that they've trotted out, held on suspicion of terrorism, treason, theft of national secrets, that sort of thing," Wes said, "and maybe some of them are innocent, yeah?"

"So Charles just picks out who's innocent and who's not?" Raven asked, sceptical about the entire enterprise. It didn't feel like the carefully moralistic brother that she knew to agree to invade the minds of total strangers on the dictates of other total strangers. "Really?"

"Are you having her on again, Wesley?" Charles trotted out with an awfully flowery tray with a tea set and a cracked plate of biscuits.

"She wanted to know about the CIA work that you're doing on the side," Wes said. 

"Ah yes, that." Charles flushed in embarrassment. "I think the Director still isn't quite sure what to make of us, actually. Part of him is convinced that we're all part of some terribly elaborate hoax. I'm glad to say that I haven't yet replaced the need for a proper trial and independent legal representation."

"Or not yet," Wes said. 

Raven groaned. " _Why_  are you doing this? What have we gotten ourselves into?"

"We were engaged to assist the CIA in tracking down a possible terrorist," Charles said, his eyes wide and guileless and impossibly blue. "In the meantime, I don't see what's wrong with assisting in matters of national security."

Wes rolled his eyes even as Raven reached for a biscuit. Charles industriously stirred his tea. After a while, Charles sighed out aloud and lowered his tone. "All right. It's not really what I envisaged, but we've already managed to meet other mutants along the way—"

Raven sniffed. "A psychopath and a geek—"

"Raven," Charles cut in reproachfully. She glowered at him. "In any regard, I do feel that we should work closely with the government for now. I feel like we're standing on the cusp of the birth of a new species. We're all going to have to take matters as they come. I'm not comfortable handling that sort of knowledge, that sort of responsibility on my own. I don't have anyone else with me who could guide things along by my side. So we'll have to resort to the government."

"I don't like it," Raven muttered. 

"This isn't going to end well, Charles. Inserting the CIA into anything is sort of like squirting napalm into a situation. They're notoriously heavy-handed," Wesley said. 

"Well then," Charles said awkwardly, "look. They're wary of us, I can feel it in their minds. One of our kind has quite possibly murdered, or done away with, a US Army colonel, and seems hell-bent on future mischief. Another one of our kind destroyed a ship with seemingly little effort, also in front of CIA witnesses, then walked out of a maximum security facility without even setting off a single alarm. To them, we're dangerous. We're going to have to work some damage control. Or things might get worse, very fast, for those of us out there who are utterly innocent and unaware of all of this. We've got to fix things, or we're going to have a lot of blood on our hands."

"Okay, Charles," Raven said, reluctantly. "I see where you're coming from." They could run, but Charles wasn't the sort to run from things. Particularly not whenever he felt that he was in the right. "So what are you working on with Hank, anyway?"

"An amplifier." The tight worry on Charles' expression faded into a boyish enthusiasm. "With any luck, it'll help me reach out, find other people like us." His smile faded a fraction. "At the least, I think that we should warn them."

"Or it might backfire and make all your hair drop out. Just a thought," Wes said, palms up in mock surrender when Charles scowled quickly at him. 

 

IV.

Erik refused to go to Russia.

He tried to rationalize it by revising his earlier arguments against going, about the difficulties he would have just to get in. The language barrier, the way he'd be working blind in a shitstorm. Erik couldn't quite help the niggling sense of self-doubt—that he was not going to Russia purely because Wesley had told him that he'd see him there. Erik was wasting his time in America waiting, terrorizing his sources and working to string together the CIA's reports, trying not to feel petulant and childish.

Wesley reappeared every night like clockwork, usually about an hour to midnight. He was playful and cheerful even if Erik attempted to ignore him, chattering about some sort of project that Charles was involved in with McCoy and about the antics that Raven and himself had gotten up to in the facility. In the beginning, Erik considered taking a flight out from Virginia. Head somewhere much farther northward until he moved out of what looked like Charles' impressively considerable telepathic range. Yet it wasn't as though Wesley was purely there to annoy him. At the end of all his rambling, there was always an update or two on the CIA's hunt for Shaw. 

After a week, Erik was reluctantly growing inured to Wesley's visits. After two weeks, he no longer even felt unsettled by them. He was still cautious—he forced himself to stay wary of the slightest hint of a touch on his mind—but Erik liked to think himself pragmatic. Pooling resources, even by relay, was more efficient than running scared because of an optical illusion. As long as he kept himself aloof and careful, he should be fairly safe.

After a week and a half, Erik was beginning to look forward to the company of a dead man's imaginary shade. Fucked up as that was. He'd spent most of his life on the move, careful to stay distant from company. He couldn't quite remember the last time he'd had such long, daily and non-violent conversations with anyone. Wesley-Charles had a sly, wicked sense of humour and an irreverent concept of morality that amused and intrigued Erik all at once. The  _Charles_  whom he had met and spoken to on the CIA-chartered ship had been the opposite, irritatingly naive and unapologetically idealistic. 

Besides, if Erik had to admit, not that he would even under torture—the conversations were growing... pleasant. Wesley and Charles were gorgeous people. Those brilliant blue eyes. Their quick smiles, so easy on the eyes. Erik found himself absently rubbing one out in the bathroom closer to the third week, buzzed from sleep and steam and squeezing his eyes shut to an afterimage of Wesley-Charles' bright grin. Afterwards, he slammed a fist against the white tiles of the hotel room, bruising his knuckles mottled, and had a cup of coffee hot enough to scald his throat on the way down.

"Well, you look like shit," Wesley announced that evening when Erik was into his second glass of cheap whisky. Erik had been studying a set of wide-angle photographs and heat signal charts that had been left for him at the concierge this morning, hand-delivered.

"Fuck you," Erik offered in return, checking a map annotated with Moira's annoyingly tiny, angular handwriting. All of Shaw's most recent bases of operations were offshore, either on private islands owned by seemingly unconnected corporations or in tax havens. Most of them were scattered along the Atlantic, with no real discernable pattern. The information influx was at a faster rate than what he was used to. Erik felt like he was beginning to understand what Shaw was after.

"That'd be the day." Wesley grinned at him, hooking out a kitchen chair and slouching into it, the back of the seat pressed against his chest. "Oh yes, Raven and I got into their PA room this afternoon."

"PA?"

"Public announcements. We just put on some music, that's all. A little Dick Dale, a little Presley, some swing. God, you'd think that we'd set the place on fire or something, the way Moira was carrying on."

Erik allowed Wesley to natter on, sifting through the reports and covertly admiring the getup that Wesley was dressed in today. Form-fitting black leather hugged his slim, long legs, a jacket that sat tight and sleek over his shoulders. Wesley wore a white shirt beneath it that accentuated his pale skin and the brilliant blue of his eyes. Charles would be uncomfortable in clothes like these. He'd fidget and pick constantly at the collar and sleeve, perhaps, smile awkwardly and feebly protest the situation in his so-very-proper British accent—

The mental image brought a pulse of  _want_  that made his cock twitch within his jeans. Erik swallowed a startled breath and downed his whisky, grateful for the notepad and maps over his lap. Wesley didn't seem to notice, going on about the dressing down that they'd been subjected to, ending with a, "I thought we'd give it a week, then try it again. Everyone's wound up so tight, they need to relax."

Erik nodded to show willing, then he said casually, "How is the amplifier?"

"They're giving it a test run any moment now. Charles is as excited as anything. We'll use it to find Shaw if it works. Might even give you a tip-off."

Erik personally didn't think that an amplified telepathic gift could allow Charles to pick out one mind out of hundreds of millions, but then, he didn't quite understand how telepathy worked. "That would be appreciated."

"He asks after you, you know," Wesley said soberly, chin pressed over folded arms. "Quite often."

"Talk to me directly then, Charles. Rather than through your glove puppet," Erik challenged, without bothering to look up. "You know where I am, after all."

Wesley began to chuckle, shoving gloved fingers through his perennially tousled hair, watching Erik under the fringe. "You're quite possibly the most stubborn person I've ever met... ever-met... ever-met..." Wesley froze, his image stuttering. He disappeared, ripped out of reality itself.

Erik didn't realize that he'd started to his feet until the whisky glass shattered on the ground.  

4.0.

If there was one thing that Raven hated most about the Division X facility, it was their rooms. The walls were gunmetal steel, the single beds with their garish yellow blankets resembled something out of a maximum security prison, and all the furniture was bolted down, completing the sensation of penitentiary chic.

Charles was sleeping now rather than twitching and whimpering. Cross-legged and pressed against the headboard with her brother's idiot skull on her lap, Raven was finally alone. It'd taken a tantrum to get everyone out of the room, especially Hank. Now that the press of minds had faded out of sight, Charles' frown smoothed out, even in his unconscious state.

Awkwardly, Raven patted his thick curls "Wes."

Wesley didn't appear. Chewing on her lip, Raven said softly, "Come on, Wes. This isn't funny. I need you. Wes?"

Nothing.

Frightened now, but unwilling to move, Raven clenched her hand tight in Charles' shoulder. She fought back tears. Had whatever happened to Charles damaged Wes as well? "I shouldn't have let you get into that machine," Raven whispered harshly, "I  _shouldn't_  have. Why didn't I stop you? Why didn't I smack some sense into you when you wanted to help the fucking  _CIA_? Should have known that you'd have gotten yourself hurt—"

"Hey, ducky," Wes' voice was faint. Raven looked up sharply, blinking and rubbing at her eyes. The room was still empty. Wes' voice came again, this time from the foot of the bed. "Big smile, princess."

"Wes?" Raven's smile was shaky, and it slipped fast when Wes didn't appear. "Where're you?"

"Bit complicated, but I'm not really going to be corporeal for a while." Wes' voice seemed to settle at the table, sounding uncertain. "Charles is going to be fine, he just needs to sleep off the shock."

"Shock? What  _happened_?"

"I'm not sure," Wes sounded unhappy, his voice growing fainter. "You know that I'm about as interested in his science projects as you are. All I know is that he was plugged into that thing, and when it switched on, he blacked out. Something's different now, something's—"

"Wes?  _Wes_?"

 _Calm down, Raven_. The words in her mind were discordant, with an odd tonal mix, as though Charles and Wesley were taking turns to say every word.  _I have an awful headache, and you're not really helping._

"Wes just disappeared, Charles," Raven said, tense with distress. "What the fuck just happened?"

 _There's going to be less of an echo_ , Wesley-Charles murmured, edged with distraction and sour unease.  _Frayed... a mind block... power charge... Cerebro... broke the surge protectors..._

"You're not making sense and you're frightening me." Raven was surprised that her voice remained steady. "Charles."

 _Semper Fidelis... mea culpa... wings off a fly... weaving fate... the killer... no more superheroes... only the best... the world's thirsty... mea culpa..._  Wesley-Charles's jumbled array of nonsense words faded into a low, whispering murmur at the back of her mind before easing off altogether, leaving Raven still and pale, wondering whether she dared edge out to try and get help. 

Charles took in a deep, rattling breath, wetly, as though he was trying to swim ashore, then another, clawing at the bed and convulsing; Raven hugged him time, not caring that she had flickered into her original form, barely aware that she was screaming for help as Charles writhed, shuddering violently as if he was shaking all to pieces. The door slammed open, one of the agents outside peeking in for a moment before calling for aid, and it was the longest moment of Raven's life, holding on to Charles, praying, begging—

"Get something into his mouth before he bites his tongue!" Hank said sharply, running into the room and trying to calibrate a syringe. Other medical staff edged in and grabbed hold of Charles' arms, or tried to. Charles  _snarled_ , a feral, furious sound that Raven had  _never_  heard him make, kicking out to slam his heel against a male nurse's stomach, twisting to wrench out of Raven's grip, gesturing sharply at the syringe.

Hank let out a yelp as the syringe flew forward, embedding itself in the back of another nurse's neck. Charles crouched on the bed, ready to spring, his eyes darting around the room—

—even as Raven grappled him from the back and screamed as loudly as she could into his ear.

Charles flinched, going stock still. He sagged, rubbing at his eyes, and when his hands dropped away he stared at everyone with a look of genteel astonishment.

"My word. Did something... Hank?"

"Charles?" Raven asked uncertainly.

"I'm..." Charles frowned, pushing up against the wall, then he held up his hands before his eyes, studying his fingers as though he'd never seen them before. "Oh. Oh, fuck."

That hadn't sounded like Charles at all. In fact, it had sounded like... " _Wesley_?"

"Not... exactly," Charles-Wesley said faintly, colour leaching from his cheeks, turning deathly pale. "I... I do believe that I need a stiff drink." 

V.

Erik was fairly sure that Charles' insanity was contagious. He had no other rational reason for having gone to so much trouble to retrace his steps and break into the Division X facility. Whatever crazy experiment that Charles had been involved with had clearly gone awry, just as Erik had a suspicion that it would. It was highly probable that Charles was now dead, since Erik hadn't seen hide nor hair of Wesley since that last abrupt disappearance. Which meant that coming back all this way was going to be an utter waste of time anyway.

Muttering darkly to himself, Erik eased the service doors open and slipped inside, shutting down the security camera just within it with a gesture. The main entrance had been guarded. Erik wasn't particularly familiar with the layout of this part of the facility, which meant that this had the potential for massive, lethal error.

The service entrance led through a storage area to an empty kitchen. Erik paused even as he edged around a stacked pile of pots. Set behind a glass panel, just beside a dumbwaiter, was a layout for fire emergencies. Erik carefully memorized the layout, matched it to his own memories of the facility, and continued through the kitchen with a more confident step, only to open the door almost into the face of a security guard.

The guard stared at him, frozen in astonishment for a moment, then he said, sharply, "Here, who are you, how did you get in—"

Erik's hand lowered cautiously in the middle of summoning one of the knives from the kitchen to his palm. The security guard had stilled, unblinking. He continued walking woodenly towards the kitchen, flashlight bobbing.

"Charles?" Erik whispered, even as he dropped the knife.

 _You're back,_  Charles murmured in his mind,  _How curious._

Erik narrowed his eyes. There was something discordant in the touch on his mind, but he stood his ground. "You're all right?"

 _Physically, yes._  Charles replied. The touch changed. Grew lighter.  _Missed me?_

That had been more like... "Wesley?"

 _This is a little difficult to explain, off the cuff. Why don't you come up to the laboratory?_  Charles asked.  _We're all here._  

Erik didn't particularly remember how to get to the laboratory. This made it all the more unsettling when Erik realized that he had walked there himself, without consciously recalling having done so. Loose-limbed, Erik let out a high, sharp breath, then grit his teeth at the sudden brush of reassurance that netted his instinctive, outraged panic, rejecting the litany of  _calm, calm, calm_  with grim determination.

Charles was perched on a steel table, grey-trousered legs kicking out in space. No awful cardigan. He had a crisp white shirt folded up to his elbows, and an actual gun strapped to his thigh. Erik could feel the metal of it now, rather than an afterimage of metal. The apologetic smile was all Charles, but the mischief in his dancing blue eyes was all Wesley.

"What," Erik said slowly, "the fuck."

Raven was pressed against Charles, her arm tight around his waist as though he'd shake apart without it. She didn't look up at Erik. Hank glanced quickly up from the consoles, a hunted expression chasing its way over his face, then he adjusted his glasses and bent back down, nibbling constantly on his lower lip.

"I'm sorry for worrying you," Charles said earnestly. His voice was all wrong. Neither fully British-accented or American but some odd potpourri mixture of both, the intonations jarringly wrong. "There was a bit of an accident, I'm afraid."

"An  _accident_?"

"Power overload. It was... I can't quite describe it," Charles said dreamily. "It was as though the world had opened up all around me, as though I could understand everything that needed to be understood. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that I wasn't really prepared for it."

"You sound partly like Wesley, Charles, what the  _fuck_ ," Erik said warily, careful to stay close to the door He was hyper-aware of every piece and shape of metal in the room, to the struts sunk into the walls.

"I may have... built up some divisions, mentally," Charles said, after an awkward pause filled with Raven's pointedly venomous glare. "I mean, I probably could have worked out, carefully, a sort of comfortable mental coexistence after a while. It's not like it would be anything really new. We were identical twins and shared almost everything. But I felt it would be, neater to set up some boundaries, and sort of, well, set up a projection." Erik frowned. Charles hurried on, "In any regard, ah, to put it in simple, if rather general terms, Cerebro seems to have blown through my blocks, in a rather traumatic fashion, and jumbled everything together. It's going to take a while to sort it all out, but I'm fairly sure that it won't be a lasting problem. Ah... and that's all that there is to it, I'm afraid. I'm so sorry that you came all this way. I could get someone to call you a cab." 

Charles smiled at him, with Charles' endearingly anxious smile and Wesley's wicked humour in his eyes, like every shade of fallen angel. A sudden, unexpected thrum of lust hummed through Erik. He shoved his hands tightly into the pockets of his trench coat and thanked God that he had thought to button up.

"That won't be necessary." Erik managed to say, somehow managing through a miracle to keep any sort of hitch from his tone. "I'll make my way out."

"A box of new reports arrived via courier late this afternoon. You could stay the night and look over them in the morning," Charles suggested. He looked speculative now, lush red lips quirking into a lopsided smile. Erik clenched his hands tight in the pockets of his coat.

"I'll look over them now," Erik said brusquely, instantly wary. He had to go. He had to go as soon as he could, not get sucked into Charles' crazy plans and his suicidal bent on self-experimentation. "Why are you all still here?" God _damnit_. "Are you going to try killing yourself again?"

"So much negativity," Charles mused.

"He has a point, Charles." Raven made a sucking noise through her teeth, rolling her eyes. "My heart nearly stopped the last time! I thought you were going to have a  _heart attack—_ " 

The last time wasn't a problem with Cerebro, it was a problem with me," Charles interrupted gently, if dismissively. "I need to learn how to use it, become comfortable with it. It could end all our problems, just in a flash. By Moira's reports, Shaw keeps a mutant with teleportation abilities with him. Once I find that mutant's mind, I'll be able to apprehend Shaw."

"You mean you'll take over that mutant's mind," Raven said slowly, "and get him to bring Shaw here?"

"Well, yes," Charles said, oblivious to Erik's stare of disbelief. "It would be simple. I'll have to be subtle with Shaw's telepath around, but I think I know a way. She can't shield that mutant all the time. I'll just need to plant a suggestion when he's out of her range, perhaps."

"Charles, that's..." Raven shook her head slowly, wide-eyed and wary. "This isn't really you, is it? You'd never have even thought of that before."

"It seems that there are many things that I used to keep myself from, before," Charles replied, crooking his finger. To Erik's amazement, a white ceramic cup perched on a workbench at the other end of the room floated over, and Charles sipped from it before setting the cup back down beside him. "All that careful, layered restriction, blocks upon blocks that I'd set up on myself long before I even realized that I was doing it consciously. Wesley always thought that it was an utter waste."

Erik didn't realize how tightly his fingers were clenched around the Nazi coin until his joints began to hurt. "So you could bring Shaw here. Now."

"I could. Once I find the teleporter's mind. It shouldn't take long. I think I know roughly where they might be."

"And you'll turn him in?" Erik said, slow and soft.

"I'm aware that you want to kill him," Charles said, still so dismissive. "Imprisoning him might be a problem since he has powerful friends. That other telepath, at the very least, should be able to break him out of any maximum security prison every invented. We've no other option."

"There is another option. You bring him here. You let me kill him."

"Why would I do that, my friend?" 

Charles would not have asked such a question. He would have reacted with a quick, shocked negative. The way Raven was staring at Charles as though he'd just sprouted fur confirmed this. Wesley, now, Wesley was something else. Wesley understood practicality over ivory tower principles. "You're part assassin now, aren't you?" Erik felt a little guilt at playing to Charles' delusions of his brother, but he was bluffing with no cards and he couldn't afford to fold. "Then you must understand that some people deserve killing." 

"An  _assassin_?" Raven picked out, eyebrows arching upwards. "What the hell are you talking about, Lehnsherr?"

"We'll speak later, Raven, please," Charles said gently, stroking at her wrist. Perhaps because of the physical touch, perhaps something else, Raven calmed down, blinking slowly. "I'll ask you again, Erik. Why should I help you do murder?"

"Because... because I'll owe you," Erik said helplessly, scrambling for a reason and unable to come up with anything but what was forefront on his mind. "And I take my debts very seriously."

"You can't  _possibly_  think about this—" Raven cut herself off abruptly, growing blank-eyed even as Hank straightened hurriedly from the console with a startled, "Professor?"

"Hank, please continue the re-calibration, thank you," Charles said, in a clipped tone. "Raven, I think you're tired. Please return to your room and rest, I'll see you in the morning, won't I?"

"I, uh, yeah," Raven said, frowning at Charles. She squeezed his hand tightly and walked out of the laboratory, brushing past Erik. 

"I don't want her to see this," Charles said tiredly. Erik knew better, the coin clenched so tightly that the edge was beginning to cut into his palm. Wesley was watching him, coiled and calm, a predator waiting patiently to see if he could keep up. Whether Erik would be a liability to be cast aside and disposed of. Erik recognised that look. He'd given it to others who had once stood in his way.

"It's better that she doesn't," Erik replied evenly. 

Erik forced himself to hold Charles-Wesley's brilliant blue stare, even as he wondered how many times Charles had done that to his own  _sister_ , brushed aside her fears and doubts and put her abed, let her see only what she wanted to see. He'd built blocks all around his own powers, because of his quaint little moral code, and now that they were blasted away... well. Erik held a careful pride in his powers. Once, long ago, they were all he had ever been left with. He knew he was strong. He knew what he could do if pushed, and he revelled in it, enjoyed the surge of surrealism, of adrenaline that wielding impossible amounts of metal gave, whenever he was angry enough to reach past his usual limits. Charles, on the other hand, was far past any mere definition of strength. Even as it frightened Erik, it fascinated him. With Charles' ability, he could rebuild reality. Rebuild the perceptions and consciousness of all the people around him, and they would  _never even know it_. 

"I'm, I'm done," Hank said nervously, wiping his palms down the front of his white coat. "It's all set up again now, I've fixed the reflux, it should give a far more controlled kickback now."

"Thank you, Hank." Charles swung himself off the table, and padded up to the platform, pulling down the helmet. He paused just before he set it on his head, and glanced over at Erik, his smile sharp as a knife, against the gentle warmth of his gaze. "Ready, Lehnsherr?"

For a single fractal moment, Erik wanted to hesitate. He wanted to ask,  _how would I know that it's Shaw_ , or  _why should I trust what I see_ , any iteration in between. 

Charles inclined his head, the ghost of Wesley's grin on his lips. Erik pulled his hands out of his coat, the coin curling in a tight circle around his left wrist. He had spent far too long chasing slimmer needles, and he was tired of the chase. Surrender to the inevitable seemed like a leap of faith, or perhaps it was vice versa. "I'm ready." 

 

5.0.

Raven leaned against the ash tree by Wes' grave, hugging herself tightly. The air was crisp, nearly on the verge of being chilly. "You know, Wes, when you were a kid, you and Charles used to make believe that you were one person," she said, conversationally, into the empty space before the slab of white stone beside her. "You guys would call yourself 'Onslaught' and run around, never in one place at the same time, terrorising all the help. It used to drive your stepfather fucking crazy."

"You'd pretend that you were the evil twin and that Charles was the good twin, and you'd wear identical clothes and jump out at people and try to make them guess which one you were before you dropped some ice down their back. Or show them a frog. Shit like that." Raven said quietly, after a soft pause, studying the trim grass on the grave mound. "You'd prank people and get Charles into trouble, and he'd never snitch on you. I used to yell at you for that."

Raven squared her shoulders, and looked behind, at the rambling old mansion, kept clean by a skeletal, live-in staff, empty and haunted with old memories. Charles hadn't enjoyed living in the mansion, particularly once Wes had left it to work elsewhere. He'd always said that it was so quiet that he couldn't even hear himself think.

"I'm beginning to wonder," Raven murmured, dropping her eyes back to the stone, "whether I was wasting my breath after all." 

She waited, breath caught in her throat, motionless, heart thudding within her. Raven felt no touch in her head, no inquisitive, wordless query, no abrupt apparitions. Charles and Erik were in Russia, of all goddamned places, chasing some CIA lead on the remnants of Shaw's organisation's failsafes. Charles was out of range. Raven was alone in her own mind.

She hated it. Hated how there were doubts, how there seemed to be a skip in her memory at about the same time as the time of death written on the CIA autopsy on Shaw's body, in the file that she had surreptitiously stolen from the archives the last time Charles had gone on a cross-Atlantic jaunt. Raven hated how a stepfather's hatred and her adopted mother's apathy were perfectly reasonable reasons for a lack of childhood group photographs, hated how, despite it all, she still missed ignorance's bliss. She  _loved_  Charles. He was all that she had left.

And yet—and yet—she had to know. Perhaps Charles wanted her to know. He would have known that she'd find out sooner or later about that rather heavy-handed mental nudge in the laboratory. Maybe he no longer cared... no. Raven would not go down that road. Not now, not ever. Raven closed her eyes and turned her face upwards towards the sun. "I'm sorry, Wes." 

She reached over to the old gardener's spade that lay against the tree. The morning smelled clean and new, as the metal edge of the spade bit deep into the turf.


	2. Divine Inspiration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was for etirabys: 'Charles is a writer with writer's block. Erik is an email beta who comes over in person to help.' 
> 
> Looking at this prompt now in 2019, many years on and finally published in my own right, it's kinda funny how I've written it. ^^;; I've made edits to the story to fix this. Erik is no longer a 'beta' but an editor -- you can employ freelance editors that workshop ideas and concepts with you instead of grammar/spelling etc. The project Charles refers to is completely made up.

Charles skulked in the corner of the busy cafe.

There was no other word for it. He was huddled over his very good soy latte, slightly overdressed in his long-sleeved shirt, trying not to stare too hard at the faces of everyone who walked through the acid-green door. Charles was beginning to wish that he hadn't agreed to this.

The cafe was what Raven would have called A Hipster Affair, factory chic with unpainted brick walls and a rather psychedelic array of various chairs that had been bolted to the ceiling. Bulbs of dim light dangled between the legs, the wiring weaving and draped between the chairs. The tables and the actual chairs in the cafe were all cheerfully mismatched, as were the counter staff, in an eclectic mix of what Charles mentally termed as 'Prim Office Drone' and 'Early Gothic'. The cafe was called Three Bags Full. Usually, its tendency towards unusual patronage, chaos, and a happy tolerance for resident writers tended to act like muse catnip. It also made a wicked coffee and perfect sandwiches.

Recently, however—

Charles had been stalled on the current chapter of his book for months. The usual tricks hadn't worked. Not a long walk by the Thames, not a short hop into the Continent, to Prague, not mainlining excellent coffee in Three Bags Full, and not his usual email correspondence with his host of 'cheerleader' fans. Mackiver Huntsman was three weeks into the Wastelands with his unwilling companions and had hit a void worse than the worlds beyond the Infinite Reaches. 

With a deep sigh, Charles rubbed at his eyes. If this didn't work, he was going to have to enrol in a course. Something suitably stultifying. Constitutional law, perhaps. Abject boredom might bludgeon the muse back into shape.

He was a quarter done with his coffee and doodling miserably on his moleskin notebook when the chair opposite him was pulled back. Someone settled into it. Looking up sharply, Charles was about to object that he was waiting for someone else, only for the objection to die unsaid in his throat as he noticed the matching yellow chrysanthemum flower pinned to the stranger's charcoal grey hoodie pocket.

"Hello," the stranger extended a hand across the table. "You're 'ProfX', aren't you? I'm your new editor, 'magneto'. Erik Lehnsherr. It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person."

Charles stared, open-mouthed. Username 'magneto' was drop-dead, stunningly gorgeous, even in a blocky old hoodie and slightly unkempt hair, as though he'd just been running. He was slightly out of breath, and his grin had an uncomfortably large number of teeth in it, but Erik looked like he belonged on some magazine cover, not... not...

"I was expecting a woman." Charles' traitorous mouth decided to operate on auto as he shook Erik's hand. He blushed and kicked himself. "Err. I'm Charles. Charles Xavier."

"Ah, well." Erik's smile widened a little, as though he was amused. "I was also expecting a woman. Not many men write in this genre, and you have a very nuanced grasp of emotion."

"You've met other writers then. In real life." 

"Outside of Project Cerebro, no. Not usually." Erik nodded as one of the wait staff all but skipped over to take his order. He turned his brilliant, rather toothy smile back at Charles. "So, you've hit a block."

"You go straight to business, don't you," Charles said, wondering whether or not to feel disappointed. Possibly, his brain was still overwhelmed. His libido was beginning to, goddamnit.

"Ah, well," Erik chuckled, looking briefly apologetic. "In my experience, writers hate talking about their work. They prefer to talk about themselves—if they're willing to talk at all. But we're on the clock."

"I suppose we are," Charles said, taking a fortifying sip of his latte and wishing that he had ordered something stronger. He had to look like death warmed over; he'd spent the whole night chasing a minor line of inspiration that had petered out insipid. He'd sulked by punishing himself, lying on the lumpy couch in his apartment instead of folding himself into his nice, warm bed. "How long have you been working in Project Cerebro?"

"I've been working in it from the beginning." Erik's smile slipped briefly. "My boss is one of its founders."

"Oh." Charles raised his eyebrows.

Project Cerebro was a social project in writing, an invite-only endeavour for promising young writers, where they were paid an advance and given a year to complete—or make a concerted attempt at completing—a novel. Everything was anonymous. The writers, the editors, the sponsors, to see if peer review suffered through purely electronic conceptual interaction. Charles had already finished his first draft, which had qualified him for a editor, but fleshing it out had proved rather challenging. He had complained as much in his last email to his assigned editor and had been surprised when 'magneto' had offered to meet in person to discuss.

Erik smiled at Marlene when she arrived with his coffee. "So. What else would you like to know?"

"Isn't this um, going to get you into trouble?" Charles asked, belatedly. "This was meant to be an anonymous project, wasn't it?"

"The writers aren't meant to know who each other are. Especially those on the joint projects. There aren't any rules for editors," Erik said. This was reading rather closely along the lines, in Charles' opinion. "And it's rather late to ask, isn't it?"

Charles smiled hesitantly. "I suppose so. But I'm really sorry if it's going to cause you trouble."

"Don't be," Erik told him warmly, leaning forward a little. "I won't regret it."

Instead of working on Charles' novel, they spent the lazy afternoon first discussing Tolkien, then so-called 'New Weird' genre of fantasy. They debated the finer points of Perdido Street Station and posthuman transformation themes, of multi-species communities and its possible flavours of civil discourse, until one of the wait staff cleared their throats politely. Three Bags Full usually closed at three-thirty. It was now nearly four, and... and Charles felt exhilarated, like he was finally firing on all synapses. They hadn't even started working on his plot structure.

Erik was magic.

Erik walked him hope despite Charles' feeble protests, and Charles basked all the way down four blocks of streets to his apartment block. Turning reluctantly once they were at the narrow gate, Charles tucked his hands into his pockets and smiled. "Thank you for that, Erik. It was a lovely date. I mean," Charles added hurriedly, flushing, "it was a lovely, er, lovely meeting, thank you, yes."

"I'm afraid that it wasn't very productive." Erik graciously ignored his slip of the tongue, to Charles' mixed relief and minor disappointment.

"Oh no, you've been a great help. I feel like I'm ready to write another ten thousand words," Charles corrected. He gathered his courage. "I wouldn't mind, that is, if you have the time, I wouldn't mind if we did this again?"

"When?"

"Um... when you're free?" Saying 'tomorrow' was probably too forward.

"Saturday," Erik decided with a beautifully gentle smile, like he couldn't quite believe his luck, and Charles' heart jumped against his ribs in pleasure. "Same place. Or we could have dinner."

"Dinner would be lovely."

"Then it's a date." The corners of Erik's eyes crinkled adorably when his smile widened. "I'll pick you up at six."

"Six on Saturday," Charles agreed. It was only later, within his flat, that he belatedly registered what Erik had said.

A date.

He grinned. Perhaps there was a God who looked after struggling writers, after all.


	3. Misunderstandings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For xsilverdreamsx. Erik slays a dragon, goes into the cave to rescue the maiden, and finds Charles instead.
> 
> I was briefly considering doing some sort of Roman Soldier/Gaelic Witch sort of AU, but then that's been done quite a few times by some lovely writers. So here's a total medieval AU instead, sort of like a Witcher/D&D styled 'verse.

The acidic stink of the dragon grew only stronger the deeper that Erik ventured into the warrens that it had called its home, trying not to breathe too deeply, the gauze-sheathed lantern floating a foot before him, careful of his tread. Serpentine-type water dragons of the silver wattle variety that he had just slain tended to live in tunnels flush with their own vicious young. Often the last thing an unwary dragonslayer had seen was a juvenile, dog-sized silver wattle, coming in at throat height.  
  
The first offshoot cavern that he checked was empty. Erik proceeded to the second one, as silently as he could. He could hear the distant scrape of something moving on slippery rock, which meant that the creature probably had a nest. Conscious of the sparkbombs that he had strapped to his waist, Erik forged onwards. He was tempted to use the bombs to collapse the tunnels, but he had to check first for exit tunnels. Nothing made a village less disposed to coughing up the rest of a downpayment than a brood of angry, slightly singed dragonlings descending on the nearest soft targets.  
  
There was another scraping sound, closer, this time, and Erik slowed to a silent prowl, sword drawn. The next tunnel sloped upwards, into a faint yellow glow, as though from a lamp, and astonished, Erik straightened up as he heard a low, musical humming, from a  _human_  throat. Padding up the slope, he came upon a cave, the walls studded with fungal growths and mushrooms, a hooded lamp set carefully on a protruding rock.   
  
A slightly-built man was standing in profile, carefully scraping a fan-shaped fungus into a bag. He was dressed in a homespun tunic and an old pair of boots that looked one size too big for his slender legs. Walnut brown hair was hand combed in an unruly tousle over a soft-angled face, upon which brilliant blue eyes were screwed narrow in concentration. Taken aback, Erik gawked until the young man turned to regard him with surprise.  
  
"Oh, hello. Erik, was it? I see that you've killed the dragon. I'm afraid that there's been a terrible misunderstanding."  
  
The young man's speech was cultured and careful, quite unlike the rest of the village huddled on the edges of the dragon's territory. "How did you know my name?"  
  
"Ah." The young man blinked. He glanced at the lamp that Erik was holding up in the air by his powers. "I have my ways."  
  
"You're a psionist?" Erik asked, his suspicion deepening. "Shouldn't you be at the Towers Ivory?"  
  
"Theoretically, theoretically." The young man offered him a hand to shake, belatedly realized how filthy his gloved fingers were, and dropped his palm. "My name's Charles. It's a pleasure to meet you, even though, mm, mishar's tears only grow in the lairs of dragons, it's something about the air, you see. Quite unfortunate. Still, I suppose that I have just enough to finish treating that spot of orange fever in the village, as long as it hasn't spread."  
  
"You're the travelling healer," Erik concluded accusingly. "The villagers were concerned that you'd been taken by the dragon, so they called in a slayer."  
  
"I see that," Charles noted regretfully. "I suppose I should have spoken to Carras—that's the village leader—rather than leaving a note. And I'm really rather sorry that they told you that I was a woman. People in the outer rim tend to have a rather fixed conception of what interests a dragonslayer, I'm afraid."  
  
"Are you also 'really rather sorry'," Erik snapped, beginning to feel irritable about it all, "that you 'forgot' to tell them that you were a psionist? You were in no danger from a third tier dragon at all!"  
  
"I'm sorry to have troubled you," Charles replied evenly, turning back to his gods-damned mushroom picking, "but you'll find that they'll be quite happy to pay your reward."  
  
Erik hesitated, unreasonably annoyed. So far, Charles had been the most ungracious 'victim' that he had ever rescued from a dragon, and that included the miserly old man up in Tallesrigh. After a moment, Charles sighed and looked back over at him, pulling off a glove to rummage in his pockets. He tossed a small pouch at Erik.  
  
"Here. Your reward, kind sir. A nice top up to your usual recompense, I suspect."  
  
"I don't want your money." Erik scowled, tossing the pouch back. "I'm taking you back to the village to earn my bonus, then we'll part ways."  
  
"But I haven't finished," Charles protested. "And this is quite important. The fever's rather contagious, and I'll rather nip the problem in the bud before it reaches the other towns through the trade routes. It's quite dangerous to children, you know."  
  
Rather to Erik's surprise, he muttered, gruffly, "I'll help you, if that'll make you agree to leave any quicker."  
  
Charles brightened up, with a quick grin. "Really? Very well then, here's a spare set of tools, and the mishar's tears fungi are these ones, with the pale blue lines, and  _do_  be careful with them."  
  
Charles talked in a steady stream of good-natured babbling through one of the strangest afternoons that Erik had ever spent, ankle-deep in dragon waste and combing a wall for blue-veined mushrooms. Apparently, Charles was still, 'theoretically', a fellow of the Towers Ivory, but had left on unofficial sanction to investigate the Resurgence. There had been an upsurge in people born with powers, in the last few years, and the Towers were growing concerned.  
  
"Usually anyone born different is inducted into the dragonslayers or the Towers," Charles said as he carefully bagged another mushroom, "but there's been an unusual increase in the number of... minor powers. Ones that do not fit Tower categorization or meet the dragonslayer threshold. The Towers are not entirely sure what this portends."  
  
"Usually a Resurgence is a mark of an incoming Descent, isn't it?" Wars were fought in another plane, by the gods and their seraphii. Erik only vaguely remembered the enforced theological classes in the dragonslayers' guild, but whenever the Wars began to skew one way or the other, magical fallout tended to leak into the mortal planes, increasing the number of people born with powers.  
  
"Usually, yes. But the people born with powers tend to be stronger and stronger, closer to a Descent, rather than weaker. For example, in the last village that I passed through, the three children who were born in the last month shared a common ability to float. Not very high, only a few feet, and only for a few minutes." Charles frowned prettily. "It's very intriguing. Resurgence is my field of speciality in the Towers Ivory."  
  
Erik made a mental note to mention this to Guildmaster Fury, the next time he returned to the Endershaupt. "An incoming Descent usually means an increase in the numbers of the jormungnar. That hasn't been the case." The number of dragon contracts, as far as he knew, had stayed the same. Charles hesitated, shooting him a sidelong glance, and Erik frowned at him. "Hasn't it?"  
  
"Maybe." For a psionist, Charles was clearly a terrible liar.  
  
"Did you read something in the silver wattle's mind?" Erik demanded, straightening up.  
  
"I don't have to tell you," Charles retorted, unimpressed and unintimidated, although a dragonslayer's spellbreaker runes could at close range was dangerous for any psionist. "I don't approve of dragonslaying. The jormungar are sentient creatures. Human encroachment on their territories is usually the reason for all this misunderstanding."  
  
"I've seen the jormungar devour villages, down to every woman and child," Erik shot back flatly. "They're monsters. Intelligent monsters, I'll grant you, but monsters."  
  
"There are other ways. Like this cave's previous owner, for example. I'd just convinced it to stick to wild game and the trout from the streams. That had taken a lot of cajoling and reasoning, mind you." Charles sighed. "I should have been paying attention. This has been such an awful waste."  
  
"Silver wattles can survive on fish. But what about the big reds, or the ebonies?" Erik had never had to justify his profession before. He felt morbidly fascinated.  
  
"They're really rather rare, and I haven't met any of them before." Charles opened the bag for the last of the mushrooms. "Oh, don't be upset. Lady Frost—she's the Archon of the Towers Ivory—tells me often that I was probably dropped on my head as a child. Says I'm too sentimental."  
  
"You've changed the subject. Are there more jormungar, Charles?"  
  
Charles eyed him carefully as he tied up the bag and picked up the lantern, then he finally conceded, "Something is causing a pseudo Resurgence, Erik. Whatever it is, it's possibly also creating a similar, weak effect on the numbers of minor tier jormungar."  
  
"And you've been tasked with finding out what it is?" Charles squirmed, dropping his eyes, and Erik sighed. "You haven't, have you? You're a runaway. 'Unofficial sanction', my arse."  
  
Charles winced at the statement. "Resurgence  _is_  my area of expertise, and I'm really rather... oh, very well. If you must know, yes, it's entirely possible that I may be in a spot of trouble, but the phenomena is far too intriguing to study from a distance, and I think that I'm quite close to a breakthrough. The townships and villages around the Broken Spine mountains have the highest instances of irregular births of late, I'm sure that whatever it is that is causing the problems is in the area."  
  
"The Broken Spine mountain stretch for miles," Erik pointed out. "Over a quarter of the continent."  
  
"I'm well aware of that, my friend," Charles nodded complacently. Erik rolled his eyes.  
  
"I'll present you at the village, leave a message for my guildmaster, then I'll accompany you."  
  
Charles stared at him, rather alarmed. "What? Why?"  
  
"Because whatever it is that is causing a pseudo Resurgence is probably a source of power, isn't it?"  
  
"Quite possibly," Charles conceded doubtfully. "There was a similar effect, centuries ago, with the Infinity Gems crises, but there aren't enough correlations for me to draw any concrete conclusions."  
  
"I know a dragon that would love to get its scaly paws on it, then," Erik stated grimly, his fists clenching.

Charles watched him, his expression growing sober. "Sebhastyrr the Wyrm? Oh, my friend. Your entire guild tried to rid the world of it, once, and was nearly completely destroyed in the attempt."   
  
"I'm aware of that." Erik had been there, after all, had been a child hidden in the smoking wreckage of his township when the dragonslayers had attacked the Wyrm in their gleaming ranks of storm-forged silver. They'd eventually retreated, most of their ranks slain and broken. Fury himself had been grievously injured.  
  
"Well," Charles said after a moment's uncomfortable silence, "I suppose that I could use the company."  
  
"Good," Erik said. They walked all the way out of the cave into the dying afternoon sunlight before the thought that had been nagging at the back of his mind finally hit him. "You can talk to  _dragons_?"


	4. Another Meaning for Eternity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geometry of Chance continuation, for ragenserenity. This story will not make sense unless you first read https://archiveofourown.org/works/270679 
> 
> Ragenserenity originally asked for a 'verse crossover (Geometry of Chance and Accident of Circumstance), but I generally prefer not to write crossovers of my own AUs ^^;; As she's ok with a straight-up continuation of either 'verse in lieu... mm... I have to admit that I'm always somewhat embarrassed writing vampire AUs. As much as I do love reading vampire AUs, writing them makes me feel like I'm in high school all over again.

"This is your fault," Charles told Azazel primly.  
  
"You've said that twelve times to date, Cresil," Azazel grumbled, shifting awkwardly in the Sansenoy steel shackles. "And be quiet. You're giving me a headache."  
  
"Good," Charles growled, similarly shackled at his wrists and ankles to the wall beside Azazel. In his case, a thin band of Sansenoy steel also surrounded his brow. " _I_  have a headache."  
  
Azazel frowned at him, though the Shemhazai Prince also looked paler than usual, constantly squirming to try and keep a minimum amount of skin in contact with his shackles at any point in time. He couldn't reach the Roads with the steel on his skin. "The steel on your brow—"  
  
"I can't touch the dreamthief's gift," Charles said, lightheaded and nauseous. "It's as though I'm looking at the world buried in cotton. Suffocating cotton. This is your fault,  _your Highness_. If you hadn't nagged me into assisting you with yet another of your ill-thought plans—"  
  
"—if  _you_  hadn't blundered into the wards—"  
  
"—if  _you_  had done your share of scouting and due diligence—"  
  
"—if  _you_  had spent, perhaps, even one century of your immortal life learning  _some_  degree of hand to hand combat—"  
  
"—if  _you_  hadn't insisted that we come alone, without Erik and the others—"  
  
Azazel said a very rude word in the Old Tongue that made Charles raise both his eyebrows. He sighed out aloud. "Can we concentrate on finding a way out of here?" Azazel asked.  
  
"We're well and truly caught," Charles said sullenly, "and if this is the end of our lives as we know it, then I intend to make yours as painful as possible. I've told you before that this Sebastian Shaw character was far too much trouble."  
  
"No, you did not."  
  
"And yet you persist in trying to manipulate him into conforming with your plans." Charles ignored the interruption. "Look at the result. Now he will be revenged on the both of us. And may I add that the _last time_  I encountered him I ruined a perfectly good Savile Row shirt. History now seems poised to repeat itself."  
  
"If you had agreed to assist me from the very beginning,  _before_  he found that damnable helm, this would never have happened," Azazel shot back snidely.  
  
Charles sniffed. "Oh yes, instead, we'll have had the Book of Revelations. I've always found end-of-all-days scenarios  _so_  charming."  
  
"Your mother was also fond of pointless dramatics."  
  
"She never did have much fondness for Shemhazai stupidity, that's for certain," Charles said tartly.  
  
"Oh, and if I'm being  _stupid_ ," Azazel snarled, "do you have a plan to get out of here, then? Instead of wasting your breath interrupting my attempts at concentration?"  
  
"They'll bring us food sooner or later, won't they? And that Shaw fellow said something about wanting to run some tests of some sort," Charles said with distaste. He hadn't exactly been paying attention. Charles found people like Shaw tedious, especially in mid-gloat. "We'll try something then." Charles made a tiny gesture, as though grabbing something.  
  
"They'll be expecting something," Azazel muttered, though he brightened up. "You mean, the Sansenoy steel...?"  
  
"Worth a try, isn't it?" The ability to draw energy from other living creatures wasn't part of the dreamthief's gift after all.  
  
"Why didn't you try it  _earlier_?"  
  
"Couldn't concentrate. The backlash from the wards," Charles said.   
  
Charles wasn't entirely sure whether the rest of his natural abilities would work, and as it turned out, it didn't matter. Shaw used robots to fetch them food. If not for the fact that Azazel was too ill to eat anything, the Shemhazai Prince would probably have tried to gloat.

Azazel grew silent and withdrawn after the second day. On the fifth day or so, wondering whether Charles was about to die first of hunger or of boredom, there was a screeching, wrenching sound, and the door was dragged to a side, like a furl of paper. A guard stood behind the door, right hand outstretched. As their shackles and his circlet clicked open, Charles said, "You're late, Erik."  
  
Erik pulled off his helmet, relief and irritation locked in a familiar battle over his face. "Gratitude might not go amiss,  _liebling_. I had a devil of a time getting in here."  
  
"And Shaw?" Charles got to his feet. He stumbled and was deftly fielded by Erik, who hugged him tightly for a moment, his breath hitching. "Don't touch me skin to skin until we're someplace safe. And private."  
  
"Ah." Erik flushed a little when Charles smiled lazily at him. He glanced over to Azazel. "Is your friend dead?"  
  
"You don't need to sound so hopeful." Charles edged over to Azazel and nudged him in the ribs with his foot. "Azazel. Get us out of here." Azazel moaned, muttering a faint string of words in the High Tongue, and rolled over. "Oh, for the love of Creation."  
  
"We could leave him here," Erik suggested, not even bothering to keep the hope from his voice.  
  
Charles pursed his lips, momentarily tempted. He sighed. "No. Unfortunately, I think that I still need him. Can you carry him?"  
  
"Reluctantly." Erik wound a few lengths of the chain that had attached them to the walls around Azazel, and lifted him up in the air, rather like a wrapped parcel. "Now, if we're careful, the exit should be—"  
  
"Just take us to the shortest way out. We don't need to worry about being careful." Charles tapped at his temple.  
  
"Ah. Yes of course." There was a faint hint of ironic amusement in Erik's tone, but Charles pretended not to hear it. "As to Shaw, he's dead. I crushed his helmet." When Charles stared at him with reproach, Erik growled, "He was going to experiment on you, Charles. Unusual living things fascinate him."  
  
Charles turned away the eyes of the first guard patrol that was coming close to them and decided not to argue. He didn't really have the energy for it at present, and he did feel a vague sense of guilty relief that the source of Azazel's more troublesome ventures in recent history had now been terminated. "Just get us out of here, Erik."

#

  
Once home, they Azazel poured into a couch in the pub to sleep things off and retired swiftly to Charles' room. Charles was too impatient for clothes—once they were alone, he shoved Erik against the door and kissed him, drinking deeply as Erik jerked against him with a grateful moan. Charles used none of his abilities on their first round, grinding breathlessly against each other on the bed. Erik cried out his name as he burned into his release, groping against Charles' clothes until Charles reached out and pinned his wrists to the bed. He took his time to strip them both down, skating his fingers over the silver dusting Erik's hair. Now that he was older, Erik couldn't physically get aroused again as quickly as Charles liked. Not by himself. As Charles kissed Erik and  _reached_ , Erik bucked against him with a groan as his cock thickened against Charles' thigh. 

When Charles was no longer hungry, he stretched and yawned, sitting up. Erik pressed a sticky palm onto his bared thigh as Charles was about to get up from the bed to have a nice, warm shower, and ignored Charles' pointed glance. "Killing Shaw... that did not change anything, did it?" Erik asked.  
  
Charles stared at Erik, mildly confused, then he picked memory and context from Erik's mind. When he hesitated, Erik sat up with some effort, the warm taste of contented energy bleeding from him turning edged with slow panic. "Charles."  
  
"Shaw isn't the first person whom you've killed," Charles said quietly. "Will he be the last? It gets easier each time, doesn't it? When you start thinking that some lives have less value than others, that's just the first step on a very slippery slope, Erik."  
  
"Never again—"  
  
"Oh, and if someone threatens us again?"  
  
"Then—"  
  
"It'll get easier each time," Charles predicted. He rubbed his palm over his hair tiredly. "You'd promise me anything now to keep me from asking you to leave. But this isn't new to me, Erik. Humans have loved me before. Sooner or later, you'll grow old, and you won't be able to give me what I need. What then? Your kind is easily given to jealousy and violence."  
  
Erik grew very pale, his jaw clenching tight. "I know that. Someday I'll grow too old. I know that someone else will take my place. Logically I can't begrudge you that. It's how you feed."  
  
"And what will you do then?"  
  
"I try not to think about it," Erik growled harshly. His hand tightened over Charles' thigh. "Must we talk about it? It'll be years yet. Decades."   
  
The energy that Erik was exuding now was bitter, ashen. Charles sighed. The long, dark shadow that had hung over most of Erik's life was gone. It would be kinder to cut him loose and allow him to find his considerable potential free of Charles' influence. Charles was fairly sure that he now knew the location of every place that Erik had hidden reminders. With time, even the invisible lure that bound Erik to a predator like Charles would fade in influence. "It's better to have this conversation now. Rather than at the end, when you've nothing left in the world but me."  
  
"Not at the end, then, but must it be  _now_?"  
  
Desperation remained a very good look for Erik. Reluctantly, Charles had to admit to himself that he was by now rather fond of him. Erik was a very intelligent companion, and his chess game had improved in leaps and bounds, and... and yet Charles could see the future coming. Lovers like Erik always grew more and more dangerous near the end. The intense pain that laced Erik's mind now at the thought of the inexorable future was already beginning to give Charles a terrible headache.  
  
"All right," Charles murmured soothingly, reaching out as well to calm Erik with a mental touch. "Not now."  
  
Erik stared at him hopelessly. He shifted over with a raw sound, pulling Charles into a tight and uncomfortable embrace and ignoring Charles' pointed tapping on his wrists or attempts to squirm free. Erik buried his face in the side of Charles' neck, muttering incoherent endearments against his skin. Charles stopped his undignified struggles, waiting this out. In another life, this would have been anathema to a proud man like Erik. The predator's lure that was an inextricable and only partly controllable aspect of Charles' nature drew out a particular madness in other sentient creatures.   
  
Eventually, Erik slept, exhausted. Charles awkwardly tucked him in, stroking his hair free of his forehead. He slipped away for a shower, and stood under the spray with a palm curled against the tiled wall long after the water had turned cold.


	5. After You're Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Celadonite asked for something from the Let Them Talk 'verse, but from Erik's POV. This story will not make sense unless you've already read https://archiveofourown.org/series/13154
> 
> Charles' behaviour in the first fic in the series is based on battered persons syndrome, and I know someone in real life who suffers from it (physically and emotionally abusive husband). I have no sympathy for the aggressors in these sorts of relationships and have a zero tolerance opinion of them. This fic is going to reflect this.

In Erik's private study, within the fortress of his Upper West Side property, there was an unfinished chess game on a low square table propped up against the beautifully grained hardwood wall veneer. A short line of discarded pieces stood at neat attention along the board, each piece either wrought of beautifully carved ivory or gorgeous ebony wood. Dust whispered in an undisturbed layer over the board in an otherwise spotless room. The game was in its early stages yet, and was unclear which side was winning.

Sometimes Erik took a seat at the board, usually at white, sometimes at black, his long fingers steepled over his lap and his gaze distant. He never touched the pieces, nor did he invite anyone to continue the game. To a brief observer, he would appear to be waiting. Or thinking of his next move. On rare occasions, he smiled to himself, sharp and neat, like the edge of a well-honed knife.

Homo Superior did not know regret, and the law was the law, however antiquated. Even if it was his prerogative as a new species to rise above petty human restrictions and conceptions. Erik could set apart the unfortunate biological impulses that imprinting had created within him if he wanted.

Charles was human, and hardly a worthy companion. He was intelligent, but for all his intelligence was still rife with particularly human weakness. His mulish belief that everything could be accomplished peacefully, for example, despite all evidence to the contrary. Homo Superior understood sapiens nature. Prone to mob-rule and mob-violence, sapiens as a whole would only understand strength. Just like any other pack animal. 

Charles' stubbornness and his passive form of defiance had lasted a handful of months before he had understood his place, and even so, his presence could often be annoying in and of itself. In a way, having Logan take Charles off Erik's hands had been somewhat of a relief. Perhaps it had weakened his own position a little. Charles' sister had regrettably left the Hellfire Club, as had her closest circle of friends. It mattered less in the full scale of matters. Charles was now out from underfoot and from his sight. In a way, Erik is now free.

And besides, Erik was busy. The Hellfire Club had become the default spokespersons for the mutant rights movement. Even as Erik grimly doubted that the path that he walks was the 'right path' that Charles had no doubt so naively envisaged, he knew it is the correct path. Homo sapiens was dangerous and could not be trusted. Erik had long known that he had to build another nation, carve out a country where mutants can live apart, safe from reprisals. He knew a location. It was now only a matter of resources. 

Perhaps someday Charles would return. Erik hadn't been unnecessarily cruel to him. Once Charles understood what was expected of him, their association was satisfactory. Save on one occasion, Erik had never struck Charles. He had known Subs who have suffered worse. At least physically. Charles was only human, besides, and the affectations of humans had long ceased to be relevant to Erik. If Charles returned, Erik supposed that he'd allow it. The chess table stands empty, and Charles' sister and her friends were all welcome back into the fold. As to Logan, the Wolverine was a soldier. Point him in the direction of a kill and he would useful. Erik could be generous.

He was not lonely. 

But for now, Erik would sit at white, sometimes at black. He would look forward, towards the future. The world still needed changing.


	6. Field Trips and Other Stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For avoyd, an AU where Charles met Moira instead of Logan.

Waking up in an unknown bed/couch/floor/gutter wasn't exactly unusual for Charles after an all-night bender, but this motel room was rather awful even for Charles' experience of terrible post-bender morning surprises. Even through his shields, he could feel the small minds of rats pattering around behind the walls.

God.   
  
Scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, Charles moaned and rolled over, dragging himself up onto his elbows before blinking, surprised. He hadn't registered another human being in the room, but there was one in the armchair, smoking a foul cigar and watching him calmly. The man was heavily built, running towards stocky, gritty hair running a rearguard battle over savagely striking features, big, rough hands curled over the fading fabric of the chair.   
  
Charles concentrated, but all he could make out even if he tried was a buzz of images, snatches of words, nothing he could latch on to, fading through his fingers. Which only meant one thing.  
  
"You're also a mutant?" Charles asked.  
  
The man snorted, stubbing out the cheap cigar. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Prof."  
  
"I didn't... you were in the bar yesterday," Charles recalled, as his memory crawled slowly back up into functionality. "I spilt a lot of beer on you." That had been awkward, even if he had been trying to plant a kiss on the man at the time. That too had seemed like a funny idea. Funny at the time, but awkward now, even if the man had evidently washed up and changed.  
  
"That you did," the man said, amused, "and while you were kissin' up to me, you told me my name."  
  
It seemed harder to try to pick out a name, or even a word. Maybe it was the cold morning or his hangover, but a usually simple party trick felt impossible, and after a long silence, Charles shook his head, slowly. How had he managed it when he was drunk? "I can't read you. Why is that? Are you also a telepath?"  
  
"No." The man seemed visibly disappointed for a moment, then he pushed himself up from the chair. "Name's Logan. I'm passing through London, seeing some friends. When you're up to it, let yourself out."   
  
"Wait, wait," Charles said quickly. "Other than my sister, I've never met other mutants before. I'll love to talk to you."  
  
"If you can't help me," Logan retorted flatly, "then we've got nothing to talk about."   
  
"What do you need? Let me try again," Charles smiled as winningly as he could even while nursing a hangover and residual nausea. "If I can help you, I will."  
  
"Don't make promises so easily, kid." Logan's tone wasn't unkind, though he scratched absently at spiky sideburns. "Go home. Get cleaned up. You're a professor at that big old school? I'll find you after I settle some business."  
  
"My name's Charles Xavier," Charles offered, conceding the point reluctantly. He wasn't really in any state right now to extend useful aid, let alone study Logan. "I hold the Genetics Chair at Oxford. I'll be free later in the evening, I just have a lecture to attend to early in the afternoon. You could come by my office. It'll be in the Department of Biochemistry."   
  
"See you then, Prof," Logan drawled. He hesitated, thinking, and added, "That trick that you did in the pub, picking out people's names from their heads for fun? Don't fuckin' do it again. And don't get that fuckin' smashed in public any more. There's people out there who hunt mutants. You were lucky enough to be born looking normal. Learn to act normal if you want to stay that way, bub." 

#

  
Excitement and anticipation had made the day crawl by even after three cups of tea. Charles was barely able to concentrate on the lecture, let alone on the papers he was supposed to be grading. When Logan let himself into Charles' Oxford office, Charles perked up so much that Logan narrowed his eyes and swept the office with a slow once-over. The previous Professor had left him half of his books, and a disturbing amount of his strange fascination with foreign gimrackery that Charles had yet to clear out, and malformed ceramic shapes stared down at the newcomer from their dusty locations on the shelves.   
  
"Sit down, sit down." Charles tried for dignity, but probably only managed excitement. Logan shot him an amused glance but settled down in one of the uncluttered chairs. "Now, do you mind if I take notes?"  
  
"Don't publish my name anywhere," Logan said, "and if you wanna be safe, don't even mention me in any of your papers. There's hard people out there looking for me."   
  
"Certainly." Charles was disappointed. So much for the genetics paper that he had been planning on writing. "So what's your 'trick', Logan, if you don't mind me asking?"  
  
"Take a look." Logan tapped at his head. "Pick it out if you can."   
  
He was sober now but sifting through Logan's thoughts was still a strangely difficult process, like chasing endless streams of thought that wove against him. Fragments of images bled past, as though Logan himself had suffered soem sort of damage at some point in the past, his memory shattered. Charles was sweating in his cardigan by the time he pulled his touch out of Logan's mind, gasping from the effort. Logan was watching him silently, unbothered by the way Charles had just sifted through his mind. Charles probably wasn't the first telepath that he had ever met.  
  
Fascinating.  
  
"You've met others like us before," Charles began slowly. Logan nodded. "Military?"  
  
"Close." Logan tensed. Charles had his interest now, at least. "What did you see, Prof?"  
  
This was exhilarating after all, exciting. Charles had always liked puzzles, and this was his favourite sort, mired in mystery and genetics. "You have the ability to heal, and you do it constantly, it's passive. That's why I can't get a grasp on your mind. The synapses work a little differently, renewing themselves at a far greater rate than a normal human does, sort of like a controlled, constructive cancer. Your mind shouldn't be able to function, but it does. It's remarkable."  
  
"Thanks," Logan said.  
  
"Oh, no, that wasn't meant to be offensive, I mean, I didn't mean any offence."  
  
"None taken, Prof. Keep going."  
  
Wishing that he'd had a fourth cup of tea after all, Charles said, "Umm. And your real name is James. I couldn't pick out the last name, I'm sorry. It's rather confused. Someone close to you used to call you Jimmy. Another Canadian, with a similar mutation. Healing and claws. You called him Victor. I think he's a relative. That's  _fascinating_. So mutation runs in families."  
  
"Wait," Logan interrupted sharply. "Describe Victor."  
  
"He's about your build. Same whiskery hair." Charles rubbed a palm up to his cheeks. "But shorter. Ginger, almost. You have claws from your hands, he has claws like a cat, retractable too."  
  
Logan mulled this over, drumming his thick fingers on the chair, then he grunted. "Good to know. Anythin' else?"  
  
"There was a lake." Charles had barely managed to pick that last image out. "Mountains in the background, snow-capped. Evergreen trees. Your vision's hazy, and full of pain. That's all I have. You've suffered brain trauma in the past," Charles said gently. "Your old memories have splintered. I can't help you piece it together if that's what you want. I wouldn't know how to start."  
  
"Would you recognise that lake if you saw it again?"  
  
"Certainly. Why?"  
  
Logan eyed him for a long moment more. He glanced away, up at the tacky, touristy souvenirs nudged up against leather-bound volumes. "How would you feel about goin' on a field trip, Prof? You and me. I'll introduce you to some of the mutants that I know. In return, you go sightseein' with me. Check out some mountains."  
  
The school term was ending next week, and Raven might object. She could always come along anyway. Besides, Raven had also been curious about meeting others like them. "Can you wait a week?"  
  
"Sure. My business here ain't finished."  
  
"Then I'll love to," Charles said brightly, mind already whirling with the possibilities. "This is all rather  _exciting._  Where are we going? Who will we be seeing?"  
  
Logan shook his head. "Don't make me regret this, bub."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> \--  
> twitter: @manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com  
> \--  
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